News tagged with small molecules

Silencing genes that have malfunctioned is an important approach for treating diseases such as cancer and heart disease. One effective approach is to deliver drugs made from small molecules of ribonucleic acid, or RNA, which ...

New research from Western University unravels a novel means of communication that allows bacteria such as Burkholderia cenocepacia (B. cenocepacia) to resist antibiotic treatment. B. cenocepacia is an environmental bacterium ...

Sometimes the best discoveries come by accident. A team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, headed by Srikanth Singamaneni, PhD, assistant professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, unexpectedly ...

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed a new approach to alter the function of RNA in living cells by designing molecules that recognize and disable RNA targets. As a proof ...

(Phys.org)—Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed a new method of screening more than three million combinations of interactions between RNA and small molecules to identify ...

Plant scientists at ETH Zurich have developed a new African cassava preferred by consumers and farmers that is resistant to the two major virus diseases in Africa. Now they want to test the resistant cassava in Africa.

(Phys.org)—Scientists on the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have designed a compound that shows promise as a potential therapy for one of the diseases closely linked to fragile X syndrome, a genetic condition ...

A new study by University of Kentucky researchers shows promise for developing ultrastable RNA nanoparticles that may help treat cancer and viral infections by regulating cell function and binding to cancers without harming ...

occupied not by stars and planets but substances that could become useful in everyday life  has concluded that scientists have synthesized barely one tenth of 1 percent of the potential medicines that could be made. ...

Small molecule

In pharmacology and biochemistry, a small molecule is an organic compound that is not a polymer. Biopolymers such as nucleic acids, proteins, and polysaccharides (such as starch or cellulose) are not small molecules, although their constituent monomers—ribo- or deoxyribonucleotides, amino acids, and monosaccharides, respectively—are often considered to be. Very small oligomers are also usually considered small molecules, such as dinucleotides, peptides such as the antioxidant glutathione, and disaccharides such as sucrose.

While small molecules almost always have a lower molecular weight than biopolymers, a very small protein with a defined fold, such as the artificial ten-amino-acid protein chignolin[1], can indeed be smaller than some exceptionally large small molecules such as triglycerides.

Small molecules can have a variety of biological functions, serving as cell signalling molecules, as tools in molecular biology, as drugs in medicine, and in countless other roles. These compounds can be natural (such as secondary metabolites) or artificial (such as antiviral drugs); they may have a beneficial effect against a disease (such as FDA approved drugs) or may be detrimental (such as teratogens and carcinogens).